Unions are calling on employers to stop forcing staff onto Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) ahead of new laws expected to be tabled next month in Federal Parliament that will ban AWAS and begin scrapping Work Choices.

Reports today show that Wollongong University is the latest of several major employers that have recently been found trying to lock staff into AWA individual contracts before they are outlawed by new legislation.

New staff members at the University’s medical school are being asked to sign AWAs that are inferior to the collective agreement negotiated by the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU).

The Wollongong University AWAs run for five years without guaranteed annual pay rises. They also remove significant employment conditions compared to the collective agreement, including some allowances, leave provisions, levels of redundancy pay and, importantly for university staff, protections for academic freedom.

Wollongong University follows other major employers caught trying to lock employees onto substandard AWAs ahead of the Rudd Labor Government’s moves to ban AWAs when Parliament resumes next month.

Telstra, BHP-Billiton, the Commonwealth Bank and the Federal Government's own Australian Building and Construction Commission have all been found in recent weeks to be continuing to use AWAs despite the emphatic election result endorsing Labor’s plan to abolish the Coalition’s Work Choices IR laws.

ACTU President Sharan Burrow said:

“The ACTU welcomes the announcement by the Workplace Ombudsman to investigate the University of Wollongong’s use of AWAs.

“Despite the emphatic election result employers still don’t seem to be getting the message that Australians have rejected AWAs and want Work Choices scrapped.

“It is clearly unethical for employers to push people onto individual contracts when they know AWAs are to banned shortly.

“AWAs have typically been used by employers to bring down wages and conditions and reduce the rights of their workers.